Saturday 17 March 2012 19.00 EDT
First published on Saturday 17 March 2012 19.00 EDT

Amid angry scenes outside Molineux last weekend one Wolverhampton Wanderers supporter suggested to Steve Morgan, the club's owner, that the players were not giving everything. Michael Kightly shakes his head when told of the remark. "I strongly disagree with that," he says. "We may be a lot of things, we may be not good enough, we may be not performing but we will definitely never give up. That's something that Mick McCarthy instilled in us from day one."

These are difficult times at Wolves and it says much for Kightly that he agrees to talk when most players would take the easy option and say nothing. Wolves are sliding towards the Championship on the back of a dreadful run that has yielded 15 points from a possible 75 and the mood at Molineux is mutinous. There is outrage among the supporters at the decision to sack McCarthy and replace him with his former assistant, Terry Connor, and growing dissatisfaction with the players' performances.

It is, in other words, a miserable situation and one that is unlikely to get any better this afternoon, when Manchester United, the Premier League leaders, arrive at Molineux. Kightly pulls no punches when asked why their season has unravelled. "I think the confidence in the squad has been shot to bits of late," the winger says. "And once you get in that rut, any team that has been relegated before will tell you the same: it's hard to get out of it. We've got 10 games to get that confidence back. And the only way to do that is by being positive and upbeat."

It is a message that Kightly says Connor has been preaching and is one that he hopes the supporters will likewise heed. Kightly makes it clear that he is not trying to make excuses for the poor results but he does believe that the negativity enveloping Molineux has played into the hands of their opponents. "Every team that we play, everyone's gaffer says the same thing: 'Keep them quiet for 20 minutes and the crowd will get on their back.' We know that as players and it doesn't help. We also know that we should be doing better, so we do understand the fans' frustration, but [the negative air] does affect the players. Everyone has emotions and just by singing that little bit louder or not booing when we give the ball away has a massive effect. If someone gives the ball away and gets booed, the next time he gets the ball he's going to go in his shell. That's human nature."

Kightly is at pains to point out that the last thing he wants to be seen to be doing is having a go at the fans, which is not his intention. The 26-year-old says that he feels indebted to them for the "unbelievable" support he has received ever since he signed from Grays for £25,000 in 2007 and stresses how determined he is "to repay them with performances on the pitch" after fighting back from a career-threatening injury that left him so low that he is convinced he was suffering from depression.

Yet Kightly cannot help but think that something has changed at Molineux in recent years. He senses that the fans, like many others across the country, are no longer so tolerant and, to illustrate his point, recalls Southampton's 6-0 win at Wolves in 2007. "I remember the final whistle going and they gave us a standing ovation. I thought: 'You would never get that at any other club – what a set of fans.' But I don't think that would happen now. It's strange how it's gone. And it's not just Wolves. It's all over the country."

It is put to Kightly that footballers' inflated wages, at a time when many people are struggling financially, might have something to do with it. "I think sometimes we get put on a pedestal because footballers earn good money and because they've got this car and live here and do that, people think they're robots and that they haven't got feelings. But that's not the case. We still care the same and we still hurt the same when we lose a game. It ruins everyone's weekend and everyone's week."

Kightly says that he stopped to speak to a frustrated Wolves fan in the car park after the Blackburn defeat eight days ago, although his conversation was nothing like the one Jamie O'Hara had with a few supporters outside Molineux that evening. "I've spoken to Jamie. He was upset. To shout abuse to him when he's got his baby in his hands, I don't think that's on. And I think that anyone that has got anything about them would agree with me. But everyone makes mistakes."

Some would argue that Morgan made a huge one when he sacked McCarthy. "It was horrible," Kightly says, recalling the day McCarthy was dismissed. "We felt that, as a squad, we'd let him down this season. And for me personally, he brought me from nothing and made me who I am and that will always stay with me. I just wish if I had been fit, I could have given him a few more performances. I'm not saying that we wouldn't be in the position that we're in because I'm not that arrogant to think so. But I would like to think I could have chipped in with a few goals and assists, so that is a guilt that lies with me."

Kightly's injury problems started when he suffered a fractured metatarsal in March 2009, shortly before Wolves won promotion to the Premier League. He injured his ankle later that year but it was the patellar tendinitis that he suffered with in both knees that broke him physically and mentally. He went 17 months, between November 2009 and April 2011, without making an appearance. "It was as though someone was sticking a knife in my kneecap every time I planted a foot," Kightly says.

The psychological battle was just as tough. "I definitely feel that I was depressed," Kightly says. "As a young lad all you want to do is play football and, when you can't do that, you feel hopeless. I went from being one of the top players at the club to being someone that no one knows. And you start thinking: 'If I don't play football, what am I going to do?' It was a scary time. I split up with my girlfriend at the time just because I wanted to be alone. I was that down that I didn't want to talk to anyone."

Things turned around from the moment Kightly went to see Hakan Alfredson, a tendon specialist who also operated on Owen Hargreaves. Having been told by another surgeon that he would never play football again pain free, Kightly underwent a simple procedure in Sweden at the end of 2010 that provided an immediate remedy. "Basically we wanted to leave the surgery to the last thing," says Kightly. "Looking back now, if we had done the surgery first of all, I would have been out for maybe six to eight weeks."

His rehabilitation was aided by a loan spell at Watford earlier in the season before he returned to Wolves at the turn of the year and marked his second Premier League appearance of the campaign with a goal against Aston Villa at Molineux during a superb first-half performance. "I was so looking forward to playing at home and showing the fans that the old Kights was back. And when I scored that goal I was so emotional. It was two years of frustration coming out of me."

With so much time lost, the last thing Kightly wants to do now is contemplate a return to the Championship, which is where the dismal results over the last few months suggest Wolves are heading. "If you look at that, it's relegation form," admits Kightly. "But we're one point away from getting out of it and that's how we have to look at it. You saw how close it was last season and it probably will go down to the last game again. We've got to fight to the end. If we give up now, with 10 games to go, that's criminal."